One of the most time-consuming tasks when hiring is going through numerous documents from the applicants. These documents include contracts, cover letters, and CVs. You may find a day insufficient to complete sorting out the best candidates. The more time you spend dealing with documents, the more time you’re wasting instead of doing other important matters.
Moreover, as time passes by, the possibility of losing the best talent increases. You can avoid this predicament by going paperless when hiring. From job posting to the onboarding process, you can use technology advancements to find the employees you need.
What Does A Paperless Hiring Process Look Like?
As its name suggests, a paperless hiring process eliminates the use of paper to collect your candidate’s information; no more printing out copies of forms that applicants should fill out. From start to finish, you can use electronic documents to facilitate the recruitment process.
Ways To Create a Paperless Hiring Process
There are many ways to digitize your hiring process. It may seem hard at first, but you can appreciate the benefits as you go along these changes. One of these advantages is saving more time in going over the application documents. The hiring process is made easier when done paperless through the following:
1. Digitize Onboarding Forms
One of the first steps you may have to do is make your onboarding forms digital. The content may be the same as your paper documents, but they’re now converted to digital form. With these digital forms, you’ll eliminate the need to scan and print application, interview, and assessment forms. It’ll also make your data collection easier compared to manually encoding information.
You can use onboarding software
to create online onboarding forms. Most onboarding software provides all-in-one solutions wherein you can create your forms, use cloud storage for collected data, and design interview or assessment tools. As a result, you can ensure the consistency and accuracy of the information you’re collecting.
With onboarding forms, you can easily edit online application forms depending on the role you’re looking for. You can also quickly make it available for applicants to fill in. After they’re done filling out and attaching necessary documents, you can easily review each applicant’s resumes and performance reports.
Because the information and data in these forms may be useful even after the recruitment period, it’s important to store them for future reference. As mentioned, you can use cloud storage to store documents in soft copies. Instead of spending in physical storage cabinets, you can collect and keep documents in the cloud. The advantage of this is that you can easily access these documents anytime and anywhere.
From application forms to feedback, assessment forms to contracts, you can now digitize most hiring-related with the help of the latest onboarding software.
2. Take One Step At A Time
If you already have a hiring process in place, you don’t have to change it all at once. You can take it slowly to ensure that everyone involved in the hiring process can adjust to the new paperless process.
An effective hiring process involves full integration of all the members of your recruitment team. Although streamlining your hiring process is a must, you have to consider that it may take time to fully digitize such a process if the recruitment team is more used to a traditional one.
What you can do is to identify the processes that can give the most benefit to your company. If transitioning to cloud storage is most suitable, it may be best to convert your existing paper documents into digital forms such as PDFs. Then, once all documents are available in digital form, you can proceed to the other steps in the hiring process. Digitize them one at a time until your entire recruitment team is more familiarized with the paperless process.
As you go through each step, you can then fully implement a paperless hiring process without much disruption on how your team hires employees. That’s because you’re slowly introducing them to how the paperless hiring system works.
3. Use Social Media Or Job Posting Platforms
Instead of posting in traditional job ads like newspapers, you may want to consider social media platforms. Nowadays, most people spend more time browsing their social media feeds. Thus, posting any available job on these platforms can help you find talents. Moreover, you can spend less on advertisement expenses.
You can also post your job ads on job posting sites. Some may require you to pay a subscription fee, but it’ll be much cheaper than traditional job ads. These sites are especially effective if you’re looking for remote workers.
By posting on these platforms, you can also eliminate paper documents involved in marketing your job ads. This can be a good start to transition your recruitment process to digital since your applicants will be submitting electronic copies of their documents.
4. Use Digital Devices
It will be counterproductive if your applicants submit their documents electronically and you’ll still end up printing them to sort the qualified candidates. Instead, you can use your mobile phone, tablet, or computer to view your applicants’ documents or CVs. And if you’re using onboarding software, you may check their application through the software.
Since most onboarding software and assessment tools already prepare performance reports for your candidates, you only have to check them digitally. You can save your time from going over their assessment results, as online tools will already do it for you. You can then focus on verifying the ones that fit your criteria.
5. Embrace Digital Signatures
Lastly, you no longer need to print out contracts so your employees can sign the document. What you can do is start using digital signatures. As its name suggests, you’ll be signing the electronic copy of these contracts using digital signature tools.
An advantage of using digital signatures is that you can sign one document and easily reproduce your signature on all the documents you need to sign. These documents include checks, timesheets, performance appraisals, and employment contracts.
In a paperless hiring process, digital signatures shorten the time for your newly hired employees to accomplish onboarding forms and documents.
6. Use A Centralized System
Lastly, you may want to use a centralized recruitment and talent acquisition system. With this system, you’ll start building a relationship with prospective talents even before you hire them. You can use a software to manage your relationship with the candidates.
The main function of the software will be on automating rel
ationship maintenance. The software is capable of this feat because it stores all the candidates’ information that you can use during the hiring cycle. This software also allows you to conduct InMail and email tracking to maintain better communication with candidates.
By maintaining a good relationship with talents, you have more chances of hiring the best candidates. The process is similar to selling the roles to your potential talents by engaging with them. The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to apply for the position you’re offering.
Conclusion
Going paperless is now the new norm in this digital era. From running a business to hiring your employees, going paperless is now vital. If you’re coming from a traditional hiring process, you can shift to paperless with the help of IT professionals or online software and tools. That way, you can seamlessly integrate electronic onboarding into your recruitment process.
